John Watson's First Morning
by melaniec67
Summary: John Watson wakes up after an eventful night. His life will never be the same.


Hi, I don't own these characters. I'm just playing around with them a bit.

I published this story earlier today with far too many errors ( spelling, etc.). I'm sorry about that. This draft has been corrected and improved.

Enjoy!

"John Watson's First Morning"

John Watson had seen his share of beautiful naked woman, but none of them had rocked "alabaster skin" the way the skinny man he'd just moved in with did. White as marble only it all glowed faintly pink as the weak Winter morning sunlight shone behind him. Magnificent, yes, more perfectly perfect than any woman he could remember that way, and he loved women.

Sherlock wore a pale blue bed-sheet around his waist, and John could not tell what tell what was holding it in place. He couldn't have cared less. An almost-naked recent-stranger was in John Watson's room for some reason, the only thing that mattered about that sheet was that it stay in place.

"We've got to do something about you, and I don't know what."

Sherlock's voice knifed straight through the last of John's sleepy haze. John pulled himself up on his elbows. He was wearing a tee-shirt and pajama-pants.

"What?"

"I said we're going to have to do something about you," Sherlock repeated with an unfamiliar urgency.

John could feel a headache blooming in the center of his forehead. "What time is it"

"Almost 10 am," said Sherlock. "Is this late for you?"

John nodded mutely.

"Well, you you look fairly pathetic, which might work well for both of us."

"How?"

"Hot pancakes and sausage man! You let Mrs Hudson see you like this and we will both be enjoying a hot breakfast soon afterwards."

It made sense, complete sense. Sherlock didn't have to suggest he go to her apartment to borrow a newspaper, he came up with that on his own. Pancakes and sausage, just as Sherlock had said and a newspaper on the table by the time his flat-mate was out of the shower. John liked their new landlady, and he resolved not to go trying to play her like this every time he hungered for a hot breakfast.

Sherlock stepped from the steam-filled bathroom in a long, red robe. John felt awash with relief. They polished off their first pancakes in silence.

Here was how Sherlock Holmes ate a pancake and sausage: he cut the pancake into a wide strip and rolled the sausage up in it. He then cut the rolled-up sausage into pieces and dipped them into a big puddle of maple syrup. It seemed like a lot of work.

"D'you always do that?"

Sherlock looked at his plate, and then back at John. "The rolling and the cutting?: only when I'm not in a hurry. When I'm in a hurry, I just pick the whole thing up in my hands and stuff it in fast; don't even dip when I'm in a hurry, and that's my favorite part."

John could have guessed that. They'd ended the previous night eating Chinese take-away; only they hadn't taken it away, just sat there at the cramped tables. The place had a long menu of dumplings, so they ordered five different kinds, steamed, some fried, some pork, some shrimp and the House Special. Sherlock, who had concocted different sauces, seemed to have a great time dipping dumplings. They also ordered a mess of shrimp fried rice because John always found fried rice with duck sauce ladled over it to be the most comforting food in the world. He'd needed comforting, he'd only just killed somebody.

The cab-driver, the bitter, overly-under-estimated, nothing-to-lose killer cab-driver who forced Sherlock to take the cab ride to the further education college, trapped him and told him he could pick the good or the bad pill. He could pick, but at gunpoint. John had caught up with them while this was happening, so he'd seen it. John kept watching, and even after he'd seen the gun wasn't real, he could see the cabbie was really dangerous. He felt it. He couldn't hear what he was saying about the pills, but the man was a threat to his comrade and had to go.

John had needed to lay him out in one shot, so he did. In Basic Training they'd laughed and called him Dr. Dead-Eye.

"My brother is concerned about you."

"I'll be alright. I never got used to it, but I. . . . "

"He's concerned about himself, and what you could have just done to his career. Had you heard of Mycroft before yesterday?"

"I"ve been a little out of touch," John smiled. Yes, sometimes he could pull out that _I've just returned from a war _card, and this was one of those times.

"Of course. yes. Well, the thing is, no one has heard of him and he likes it that way. He's the most important man in the British government because he is the most invisible. Everyone needs him, nothing happens without him, and he walks, unrecognized, through London."

"I see."

"Mycroft loves his life, but it almost came crashing down last night. Mine too, really."

"You could have been a dead man. You had a crazy man with a death-wish aiming a gun,"

"It was a lighter." Sherlock was trying to sound like he'd known it all along, but John knew better.

"Aiming a lighter that looked like a gun at you and ordering you to choose a pill that might have been poison."

"The pills that I was holding were the ones that smelled like almonds. I thought those would be the safest."

"But cyanide smells like almonds."

"And, you see, everyone knows that. He expected people to go for the pill that smelled liked nothing and poisoned it. The safe pill was the pill that smelled like poison.

John shook his head, rattling everything into place. Was this his life suddenly? "But didn't he expect more of you? You being, well, YOU?"

"No," Sherlock said faintly, sounding a little disappointed. "I had the good pills. I checked them this morning."

"Well, that's great!"

"Yes! And it's even great for Mycroft. When I texted him him, he texted back, _Good to know I wouldn't have had to have your body removed from Baker Street."_

They both laughed.

"If you knew my sister," John assured him. "You might see this as the pinnacle of brotherly concern."

"John, this is what I expect of my brother. He was following the cab last night too, but much further back. "

"I saw him at the crime scene. He told me the time was coming when I would have to pick a side. There he was with that rolled umbrella and all, looking so perfectly. . . . I don't know what."

"Just wait until you see him in his tuxedo. No one looks more natural in a tuxedo than my brother."

John was wondering for a moment how Sherlock would look in a tuxedo; dashing surely, but not really right.

"If he's so eager to keep himself out of the news, why would he pop out of hiding there so near to D.I. Lestrade and Sergeant Donavan?"

"He was there in case he had to collect my body." As he spoke, Sherlock looked intently at some spot just past John's left shoulder. "He's never done that before, but, this is the closest I've ever actually been to the person who wanted to kill me."

John had been on his last bite of pancake, but he stopped. "Never been that close?"

"I've been roughed up, of course, a number of times, but I don't know that I was in mortal danger. Last year, my work brought me too close to a crime syndicate, so they tried to have me killed."

John could feel his eyes go a little wider. He laughed. "What? Do you mean like in _The Godfather_? Had you disappointed Don Corleone."

Sherlock looked at him, and just kept looking, like he'd missed something.

"Don Corleone, from _The Godfather; _sorry, have you not seen that movie?" John had tried to make clever film reference, but felt foolish.

"Is it a movie? No, never saw it. Anyway, I wound up on their bad side, so I was shot at once, but not hit."

"There's a hit-man out of work."

"I'm lucky he wasn't you. Remember how I told you my brother was concerned about you? Well, he checked your records."

"That doesn't surprise me." It didn't in the least.

"Did you really kill three people shooting them?" Getting specific made Sherlock sound like a kid.

"That we know of," John told him. "I wasn't always shooting right at one person that way. "

"And you're a crack shot. Is that the word?"

"Am I? Yes I am."

John was about to ask if Sherlock had ever fired at anything that wasn't made out of clay.

John and Sherlock looked at each other over the dirtied-up plates and coffee cups. Sherlock's phone buzzed.

"Mycroft?" John asked.

"It has to be. He has been texting me all morning with your military record and an article your therapist wrote on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. For a while, he wanted to send you off someplace."

"To what?" If this were a movie, some screwball comedy, it would be funny; but this was happening to him.

"I told him I wouldn't let him try and send you anywhere. He's got people he can order about without adding in you and me. He wanted to send me off too; someplace else of course."

John wanted to thank him, but the big question was, "why?"

"Why someplace else?; so we wouldn't go meeting up. Why get rid of us if we're just going to go meeting up?" Sherlock laughed. He was enjoying himself.

"Why get rid of us?"

Sherlock grew quiet for a second. "John, my brother was at a dinner party with the Prime Minister last night. And not even the fanciest kind, Mycroft has really arrived. Now, occasionally, he has me followed, and sometimes nothing happens. Last night, he has me followed, and what happens?"

"You get picked up by a killer cabbie."

Sherlock smiled. "Not only that. I get picked up by a homicidal cab driver who is himself nailed in one shot by my flat-mate. The only flat-mate, I should add, who has ever shown any interest in my work. This flat-mate and I then return to our new digs, owned by a former client of mine. My life looks better, my dear brother's does not."

"It certainly seems less," John wished a better word would come to him, "unblemished."

"Just so!" Sherlock looked at his cell phone, and laughed. "I think he might be going to another extreme."

"What do you mean?" John asked.

"My brother has just asked me for your cell phone number and told me that he plans to invite you to join him for coffee some time next week. If he's not going to get rid of you, he wants to keep his eye on you."

"Don't worry, I won't tell him anything." John smiled.

"Nor I. It's best if you learn to get along with my brother. I have a feeling we'll be seeing that we'll be seeing more of him for a while. We've scared him into a few visits." Sherlock was back to giggling.

In the next few days, John and Sherlock wrote down some House Rules. One was "Try to Avoid Emotionally Blackmailing Mrs. Hudson Into Cooking for Us Very Often". Another was to keep a list titled _"Things Mycroft Can't Know" _ in among John's DVD collection (around _T_ as in_ things_). Mycroft never knew about it.


End file.
